10 January: The Daily Mail reports that budgets for training nursery staff and childminders is to be cut by 40% after David Cameron and Nick Clegg failed to agree a deal on funding.

Labour used Freedom of Information laws to reveal how much councils have spent on training for the early years workforce and supporting childcare providers to employ well-qualified staff.

In 2010-11 almost 140 councils in England spent £93.3million but a year later the budget had been cut by 40 per cent to £56million.

Mr Twigg adds: ‘The Government has slashed the budget for training for nursery staff, putting quality at risk. In four areas – Redcar, Enfield, Solihull and Lewisham, there is now no money available for councils to provide nursery staff training.’

8th January: The Telegraph reports that the Coalition held off publishing a damning report that showed it had missed around 70 election pledges. Its existence only came to light when one of David Cameron’s advisers was photographed holding a document which discussed the pros and cons of releasing it.

Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg held a press conference on Monday to review the coalition’s performance, but feared that releasing this document would overshadow the “favourable coverage” gained, and highlight “problematic areas” and “broken pledges”.

An analysis of the Coalition’s pledges suggest that in 76 areas, action or announcements are “overdue”. The worst-performing department is the Ministry of Justice, which has failed to implement 15.1 per cent of planned policies.

Earlier this week, Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg pledged to introduce reforms in six areas that would form the centrepiece of the Coalition’s work before the next election. However, many were policies that should already have been introduced.

7 January: The Guardian reports that Nick Clegg’s attack on the Tory rhetoric of labelling the unemployed as “shirkers” has revealed that all is not cosy in the coalition, despite a joint press conference by the Deputy PM and David Cameron which was designed to show a united face.

His words come a day after Lord Strathclyde’s resignation, the Conservative peer telling of his frustration with his coalition partners in the upper house.

With the debate over welfare savings likely to form one of the central political battlegrounds of 2013, the deputy prime minister, speaking at a joint press conference with David Cameron at Downing Street, said: “I don’t think it helps at all to try and portray that decision as one that divides one set of people against another, the deserving and the undeserving poor, people in work and out of work.”

It is understood Clegg is also involved in a backstage battle on how to ensure that coalition plans for childcare will particularly help the working poor, rather than offer reliefs to the middle class.